High-ranking political staff were intimately involved in the initial process to re-develop Ontario Place, the province’s auditor general has found, leading to a process that was ultimately “not fair, transparent or accountable.”
A bombshell auditor general report released Tuesday revealed “there were many instances where the rules and guidelines” outlined for bidders looking to redevelop the Toronto waterfront attraction “were not followed” by the Ford government.
The controversial redevelopment plan is also becoming more expensive, the report found. Since 2019, the estimated public cost of redeveloping Ontario Place has increased by $1.8 billion to a total of $2.2 billion.
The current Ontario Place plan will see a private spa built by the Austrian company Therme on the west island, along with a revamped Live Nation music venue, parkland and a relocated Ontario Science Centre.
As Global News has previously reported, the auditor general also raised concerns the bidding process for Ontario Place fell short of “typical procurement law or directives” for the province, with the government giving itself the right to select bids that failed to meet its own criteria.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma should resign over the report.
“Preferential treatment, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and tipping the scales to favour insiders — the seriousness of this report cannot be overstated,” Stiles said in a statement.
“It’s time for the premier to face the consequences of their corruption — starting by firing the minister of infrastructure.”
The Liberals said the report showed Ontario Place was a “sweetheart deal.”
Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma was not present to answer questions about the auditor general’s report.
Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones, and Infrastructure Ontario CEO Michael Lindsay, a civil servant, were on hand to answer questions instead.
“I know if she was here she would talk about the need to move forward on these projects,” Jones said.
Asked if Surma should step down, Jones said: “I don’t see why. She’s actually leading some very important files and has made progress on them.”
Meetings and calls
After winning a majority government in 2018, Ontario Premier Doug Ford set about planning his vision to redevelop Ontario Place on Toronto’s waterfront.
The government issued a call for companies interested in taking part in that plan in 2019, laying out how they should apply and what information was required.
At the beginning of the public process, the province said bidders on the project should have no contact with the government while the procurement process was underway.
The auditor general found three of the groups looking to build at Ontario Place went to meetings with both the ministry in charge of the file and the premier’s office.
“Contrary to CFD Rules, participants met with staff from the Minister’s Office and Premier’s Office during the open period,” the auditor general wrote.
Later, meetings were offered to all bidders, and the meetings were repeated with the three which had initially been singled out.
One group, a destination design group called Triple Five, was encouraged to submit extra information after an internal briefing assessing the bids.
The company’s bid received a “low” score on all nine assessment criteria, with the lead assessor suggesting there was not enough information.
A few days later, a vice president with Infrastructure Ontario reached out to Triple Five to request a call for clarification. The auditor general said none of the other 10 applicants who had not provided enough information were contacted.
“Several calls and emails were exchanged between IO and Triple Five, in which IO requested that the participant add specific information to its submission that would make a re-assessment possible,” the auditor general wrote.
After that, the auditor wrote, Triple Five’s scores were upgraded and it was ultimately presented as the ultimate preferred site-wide partner.
Ultimately, the government chose to be the main developer and picked multiple bidders instead.
The access between bidders and government officials which the Ford government itself had said should not take place continued.
The auditor general found an unnamed vice president with Infrastructure Ontario in charge of assessing the financial merits of the Ontario Place bids “communicated directly” with Therme, which eventually won the bid, and “other participants” while bidding was still underway and a ban in force over communications.
In total, the vice president exchanged nine emails and took a phone call with Therme’s legal counsel “on media interest” about the spa giant’s involvement in the Ontario Place redevelopment.
The same vice president also called the personal cellphone of another bidder and communicated with them by email.
The report also found a lax attitude to ensuring a complete public record. Minutes of meetings with participants, for example, weren’t kept, the auditor general found, raising questions about “whether participants had equal access to the information that was shared during the meetings.”
The NDP said the Ontario Place revelations, along with other auditor general reports tabled Tuesday, showed the government had the wrong priorities.
“This is a government that couldn’t care less about fairness or the public interest,” Stiles said.
“Instead of investing in schools and hospitals, they hand out MZOs like candy and sell off our park land in backroom deals to broke spa companies. This report shows they learned nothing from the Greenbelt scandal and being under active RCMP criminal investigation.”
Parking and costs
The issue of parking at Ontario Place has also been an issue since the beginning of the process, the auditor general said.
The report found that seven of the 10 site-wide redevelopment plans submitted to the province in 2019 included parking plans. Three of those seven bidders said they would pay for it themselves; the government ultimately opted for Therme and promised to pay for its parking garage.
The cost to the public of providing that parking, however, has massively increased — and is set to be paid by the government.
The auditor general found that, as of May 2024, the master plan for providing parking to Ontario Place had increased from $280 million to $400 million.
The government is currently working out what the best parking solution for Ontario Place would be, according to the auditor general. There are several different options under consideration — ranging from a cost to the public cost of $162,000 per spot to $444,000.
“In July 2024, IO expressed concerns about the significant costs of building an underground parking solution at Exhibition Place,” the report said.
The report also suggested Therme may have revised its plan after submitting its bid, potentially even in the past 12 months.
Internal assessments by staff with Infrastructure Ontario in February 2024 showed Therme was planning to spend roughly $350 on capital investments in public space — the same amount listed in its application. Months later, however, when the government released its lease with Therme, the spa giant’s commitment had doubled to $700 million.
That change, Infrastructure Ontario said, came in a written note from Therme on Oct. 2, 2024, before the lease was released. “Despite this written confirmation, in Therme’s lease agreement with the province, there is no obligation for Therme to make any capital investments,” the report said.
The overall public cost of the project, according to the auditor general, costs to the public of the entire project have risen dramatically. In 2021, the government believed it was $745 million — that number jumped to $1.53 billion at the beginning of 2024, a number that excludes the cost of relocating the Ontario Science Centre.
One of the reasons the costs have grown so significantly, the auditor general said, was because “important decisions” were not made before the call for development proposals began.
The government also failed to account for the costs it would incur by overseeing bids from multiple companies and the province being the master developer coordinating their projects.
When the Ford government opted for that approach, the auditor general said, cabinet didn’t know what the costs were before it was approved.
“When they made the decision to become the master developer, it was not in the cabinet submission to say, ‘You’re going to have to take on these costs.’ The public realm and parking was a decision made later,” Auditor General Shelley Spence said.
“They didn’t know what the costs of the public realm were at that time. If you look at our wording, we actually say ‘the implications of the cost’ because they hadn’t costed it out yet. Really they should have been saying to the decision makers, ‘We’re going to be on the hook for (the) public realm if we become the master developer.”
Unusual terms
The auditor general said the process itself was “irregular, subjective and not always followed” and that the four key areas of the bid weren’t weighted. As a result, “the overall final assessment of participant submissions was a matter of subject judgement.”
Bidders were also forced to sign non-disclosure agreements with the province.
The auditor general said the unusual bidding rules meant “a few participants” said they did not “invest a significant amount of time and resources” in their submissions because the process wasn’t clearly laid out.
A third of the assessment criteria was “not disclosed” in the call for development.
“For example, submissions were assessed for ‘team cohesion,'” the auditor general wrote. “Yet this criterion was not presented in the (call for development).”